Airline cabin crew accept reductions

Press, 30 April 1982, Page 5

Airline cabin crew accept reductions

PA Auckland Air New Zealand’s domestic cabin crew-members seem set to accept a reduction in staff for internal services. The reduction is expected to lead to significant financial savings for the airline. Auckland-based cabin crew-members have provisionally agreed to the reduction in manning levels. Staff in Wellington and Christchurch are expected to consider the matter before the end of this week. The president of the Airline Stewards and Hostesses’ Union, Mr lan Hambly, said yesterday that Auckland members of the union felt the reduction in staff numbers would help the airline financialy but that they were prepared to accept a reduction only if the company decided to reorganise its management Action in recent weeks indicated that the airline was doing that. Under the new manning scale, the number of cabin crew-members in Boeing 737 s would be reduced from four to three, which is the minimum required for emergency evacuation procedures. The minimum number of cabin, crew-members in Fokke'r Friendships, Series

500, is two but the airline is trying to have the safety requirement reduced to one. If the airline succeeds, the union would man the aircraft with only one cabin crewmember. The reduction in cabin crew-members should not mean redundancies, because there is a high attrition rate in the union. In the last 18 months, 140 cabin crewmembers have left the airline. The present manning level is 285 but only 258 staff are on the pay roll at present. Annual-leave entitlements are not being met because of the shortage of staff. Mr Hambly said that by the time staff had taken their annual leave, natural attrition should have whittled the staff number to 215, the figure necessary to run the domestic service with reduced staff. International .cabin crewmembers are still considering whether to accept a reduction in the manning scale. One school of thought believed that most of Air New Zealand’s passengers flew with the airline because of the high standard of service provided and that a reduction in staff numbers could lead to a reduction in the standard of service.